I had a pretty interesting weekend, I must say. It consisted of the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good - I learned that my daughter Allie has been accepted into the University of Georgia. The bad - I got “Pete Best-ed” from the church band. And the ugly – I turned 46 years old Friday.
Let’s concentrate on the good. I was filled with elation upon learning that she’d gotten in to UGA. We were sweating it out, because it’s a lot harder to get in there now than I was when I attended. I think all I had to do was spell “UGA” and demonstrate that I knew which foot the proper shoe went on. For football players, they waived the spelling requirement.
But now they look at all sorts of crazy things like grade-point average and high school curriculum and test scores and what not, and it’s pretty competitive.
After the initial elation and pride that I felt, reality came barreling down the track and smacked me like it was Ike Turner and I didn’t have supper ready on time. The first blow was when I realized that college isn’t free, even with the HOPE scholarship. After getting word that she’d been admitted, my daughter asked me to buy her a new Georgia shirt as a reward. I pointed out that I was about to “reward” her for the next four years.
But the money can be raised, hopefully without me getting a second job or having to sell an organ on Craigslist. Now it’s the thought of turning my baby girl loose in Athens that’s giving me an ulcer the size of Lake Huron.
Of course, things have changed when I was a student there. Really, all I did was study, go to the library, attend the occasional Bible study and maybe play some Parcheesi with my friends, if I could find time after I finished up my work at the homeless center.
Okay, so that’s not exactly all 100 percent true. I lived in a house with four other guys for a year and prayed every time there was a knock on the door that it wasn’t a DEA agent. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, mind you (I’m being honest this time), but I’m pretty sure somebody in the house was at any given time.
The next year I moved into an apartment. I had a weirdo roommate who left town in the cover of night about halfway through the year, owing me and a bunch of other people quite a bit of money. They don’t put this sort of thing on the college brochures.
I only went to UGA for two years, after first graduating from a junior college. I never lived in the dorms or ate in the campus cafeterias, so my daughter will get to experience a side of college life that I never saw. She will meet new people, which is good, since I mostly hung around guys I already knew from high school and had also moved on to Athens. Two of them who lived in the house died before they reached 40, so in retrospect it was perhaps not the best decision.
But she will do great. She’s smart and ambitious and I know she will continue to make me proud. Just thinking about it makes me smile, and helps me get over the sting of being asked to hand over my drumsticks, and getting one year closer to 50.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Driving me crazy
My 16-year-old is driving now. Not just driving me crazy, but driving his own car. Well, it’s my car, but I’m letting him drive it.
Now we have four drivers at the house, which means my monthly car insurance costs are roughly equivalent to the Obamacare health reform bill. Car insurance is apparently so high because they spend $800 billion dollars a month on TV commercials. That should be your priority, mister president. Get Flo from Progressive off my TV.
The other day my son informed me that he was going over to some girl’s house. I asked him who all was going to be there, and he said two girls, and him, and another boy. Oh, he added, and her mother.
So as he was leaving, I said, “Can you leave me the mother’s phone number? You know, just in case I need to call her.” He looked at me kind of incredulously, and then he said, “Why, you don’t trust me?”
Well, that was an easy one. “No,” I said.
He wanted to know why I didn’t trust him. That’s another easy one. He’s a 16-year-old boy. I used to be one. I know what they do.
Now, in truth, other than mental anguish, my two teenagers have not caused me much trouble so far. No arrests, no lawsuits, no TV news crews on my front lawn or subpoenas or calls from the producers of the Maury Povich Show asking me to sign a waiver. But you have to keep an eye on them, especially boys.
They’re great when you’re teaching them to drive. They keep both hands on the wheel, they pay attention to what you say, they don’t turn the radio on, and they are very careful about everything they’re doing. But let this be a warning to all parents – it’s a lie. When you’re out of the picture, all bets are off.
I was standing in my driveway one day and I thought, why is a jet plane landing in my neighborhood? Then I realized it was my daughter coming down the road at Daytona 500 speed. I half-expected to see police cars chasing her and a TV news helicopter flying overhead. We had a “talk” and she doesn’t do that anymore, at least not when she thinks I might be able to see her.
We now have four cars at my house, none in the garage. We could do like our trashy neighbors and just park all over the lawn, but instead we have a game of musical chairs every night or morning trying to get us all lined up, like airplanes on a runway. The other morning I went out to my son’s car so I could get out, and when I put the key in the ignition I got quite a shock, as his stereo was turned up to 11 and I got blasted by an ear-splitting rap song. I looked like Wil E. Coyote after he accidentally electrocutes himself. Again, we had a “talk”, once I regained consciousness.
He has one key for his car, and I’ve suggested about, oh, a trillion times that he should go get an extra key made. When I say that, or pretty much anything, here’s what he hears: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. So of course, I was right in the way that dads inevitably are, and I got a phone call Sunday afternoon that he had locked his keys in his car. Luckily for him, he was at the church at the time, and my reaction when I got there was somewhat muted.
You can’t break into these newer cars as easily as you could back in my day, so I had to call a locksmith, who came right away because we were at our church and gave us a discount because, in his words, we were “good Christian people.” Luckily, he could not read my mind at the time, or he might have come to a different conclusion.
Now we have four drivers at the house, which means my monthly car insurance costs are roughly equivalent to the Obamacare health reform bill. Car insurance is apparently so high because they spend $800 billion dollars a month on TV commercials. That should be your priority, mister president. Get Flo from Progressive off my TV.
The other day my son informed me that he was going over to some girl’s house. I asked him who all was going to be there, and he said two girls, and him, and another boy. Oh, he added, and her mother.
So as he was leaving, I said, “Can you leave me the mother’s phone number? You know, just in case I need to call her.” He looked at me kind of incredulously, and then he said, “Why, you don’t trust me?”
Well, that was an easy one. “No,” I said.
He wanted to know why I didn’t trust him. That’s another easy one. He’s a 16-year-old boy. I used to be one. I know what they do.
Now, in truth, other than mental anguish, my two teenagers have not caused me much trouble so far. No arrests, no lawsuits, no TV news crews on my front lawn or subpoenas or calls from the producers of the Maury Povich Show asking me to sign a waiver. But you have to keep an eye on them, especially boys.
They’re great when you’re teaching them to drive. They keep both hands on the wheel, they pay attention to what you say, they don’t turn the radio on, and they are very careful about everything they’re doing. But let this be a warning to all parents – it’s a lie. When you’re out of the picture, all bets are off.
I was standing in my driveway one day and I thought, why is a jet plane landing in my neighborhood? Then I realized it was my daughter coming down the road at Daytona 500 speed. I half-expected to see police cars chasing her and a TV news helicopter flying overhead. We had a “talk” and she doesn’t do that anymore, at least not when she thinks I might be able to see her.
We now have four cars at my house, none in the garage. We could do like our trashy neighbors and just park all over the lawn, but instead we have a game of musical chairs every night or morning trying to get us all lined up, like airplanes on a runway. The other morning I went out to my son’s car so I could get out, and when I put the key in the ignition I got quite a shock, as his stereo was turned up to 11 and I got blasted by an ear-splitting rap song. I looked like Wil E. Coyote after he accidentally electrocutes himself. Again, we had a “talk”, once I regained consciousness.
He has one key for his car, and I’ve suggested about, oh, a trillion times that he should go get an extra key made. When I say that, or pretty much anything, here’s what he hears: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. So of course, I was right in the way that dads inevitably are, and I got a phone call Sunday afternoon that he had locked his keys in his car. Luckily for him, he was at the church at the time, and my reaction when I got there was somewhat muted.
You can’t break into these newer cars as easily as you could back in my day, so I had to call a locksmith, who came right away because we were at our church and gave us a discount because, in his words, we were “good Christian people.” Luckily, he could not read my mind at the time, or he might have come to a different conclusion.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Talk talk
I find myself more and more talking to inanimate objects that are incapable of understanding what I am saying and answering back.
No, I don’t mean my children. I mean other things in life that have me questioning my sanity.
For example, I’ve gotten really bad about talking to the TV, especially during sporting events. This past Georgia football season, I had quite a few one-sided conversations with Bulldogs’ quarterback Joe Cox. Most of what I said cannot be repeated in mixed company nor near my preacher.
Talking to the TV can cause some confusion around the house. I’ll yell, “What the hell are you thinking?”, and my wife will yell back from the kitchen, “I’m unloading the dishwasher, is that a problem?” I have to explain that I was not talking to her, I was talking to Matt Ryan. So then I’ll say, hey, while you’re up, can you bring me something to drink? At which point she yells, “What the hell are you thinking?”
I also like to talk to golf balls. I’ll yell “Stop!” or “Go!” or “Don’t go in the woods, you stupid Q@#$@!#$^@#$!” Of course, the golf ball doesn’t listen and does what it wants anyway, but I guess it makes me feel better to say something. It’s a lot like writing a letter to your Congressman.
I talk to other drivers in traffic. It’s probably a good thing they can’t hear me, especially if they have a gun in the car, because I’m rarely complimenting their driving skills or saying top-o-the-morn-to-ya. If I ever get cut off by a lip-reader with a loaded gun and an itchy trigger finger, I’m probably in trouble.
I talk to my computer screen at work, saying stuff like “Yeah, right,” especially when I open an e-mail from somebody asking me to do something unreasonable, like extra work.
I have a lot of one-sided conversations with my dog. She is a pretty good listener, though I suspect she’s hoping that no matter what I’m saying, at some point I’ll get to “Come on, Lucky, time to eat.”
I talk to myself a good bit, too. I think a lot of us do that. But with me, it’s never positive in a Stuart Smalley kind of way. I don’t say, “Wow, Mark, you really look good today,” or “Hey, that was a good decision, buddy.” No, it’s usually “Wow, could you be a bigger idiot?” or “If you get any fatter, they’re going to be taking you out of the house with a crane as Oprah watches with empathy.”
This is probably pretty normal behavior, and I guess I should only be worried if the TV and the computer or the golf ball start talking back to me. Lucky doesn’t talk back, she just licks my toes. The children talk back, but it’s often unrelated to what I’ve said to them. And no, I don’t answer when I’m talking to myself. What the hell are you thinking?
No, I don’t mean my children. I mean other things in life that have me questioning my sanity.
For example, I’ve gotten really bad about talking to the TV, especially during sporting events. This past Georgia football season, I had quite a few one-sided conversations with Bulldogs’ quarterback Joe Cox. Most of what I said cannot be repeated in mixed company nor near my preacher.
Talking to the TV can cause some confusion around the house. I’ll yell, “What the hell are you thinking?”, and my wife will yell back from the kitchen, “I’m unloading the dishwasher, is that a problem?” I have to explain that I was not talking to her, I was talking to Matt Ryan. So then I’ll say, hey, while you’re up, can you bring me something to drink? At which point she yells, “What the hell are you thinking?”
I also like to talk to golf balls. I’ll yell “Stop!” or “Go!” or “Don’t go in the woods, you stupid Q@#$@!#$^@#$!” Of course, the golf ball doesn’t listen and does what it wants anyway, but I guess it makes me feel better to say something. It’s a lot like writing a letter to your Congressman.
I talk to other drivers in traffic. It’s probably a good thing they can’t hear me, especially if they have a gun in the car, because I’m rarely complimenting their driving skills or saying top-o-the-morn-to-ya. If I ever get cut off by a lip-reader with a loaded gun and an itchy trigger finger, I’m probably in trouble.
I talk to my computer screen at work, saying stuff like “Yeah, right,” especially when I open an e-mail from somebody asking me to do something unreasonable, like extra work.
I have a lot of one-sided conversations with my dog. She is a pretty good listener, though I suspect she’s hoping that no matter what I’m saying, at some point I’ll get to “Come on, Lucky, time to eat.”
I talk to myself a good bit, too. I think a lot of us do that. But with me, it’s never positive in a Stuart Smalley kind of way. I don’t say, “Wow, Mark, you really look good today,” or “Hey, that was a good decision, buddy.” No, it’s usually “Wow, could you be a bigger idiot?” or “If you get any fatter, they’re going to be taking you out of the house with a crane as Oprah watches with empathy.”
This is probably pretty normal behavior, and I guess I should only be worried if the TV and the computer or the golf ball start talking back to me. Lucky doesn’t talk back, she just licks my toes. The children talk back, but it’s often unrelated to what I’ve said to them. And no, I don’t answer when I’m talking to myself. What the hell are you thinking?
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